India’s Sudan mission

In a rare confrontation 15 years ago, during one of my occasional forays into academia, a professor at Rice University in Texas told me during a conference that India would one day pay for engaging with Sudan. This was three years before Sudan was split and oil-rich South Sudan became the world’s newest country. The professor, who had earlier served in several administrations in Washington and was part of human rights lobbies, was furious that I defended New Delhi’s significant energy relationship with Khartoum. The defence of such a relationship was based on the same rationale that India is now putting forth for engaging Russia, notwithstanding Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.

India had played a vital role in overseeing the peaceful birth of South Sudan, thereby ending — at least on paper — the half-century-long civil war for the region’s secession.

The flurry of external affairs activity last week in New Delhi and several diplomatic high tables worldwide — setting up of a 24×7 control room for Sudan developments, a blueprint for evacuation of Indian nationals from civil war-like Sudan, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s hastily arranged meeting in New York with the UN Secretary General to discuss the fighting in Khartoum, Indian diplomatic outreaches to the White House and Whitehall, Jaishankar’s contacts with his counterparts in the Gulf — might make the Texas academic feel vindicated. She has no reason to be. As an emerging power, India cannot walk away from opportunities that offer to advance its interests even in far corners of the world, and Sudan is an example.

It has now largely faded from public memory that India had played an important role in overseeing the ultimately peaceful birth of South Sudan, thereby ending – at least formally and on paper – the half-century-long civil war for the region’s secession. This war started almost immediately after Sudan got independence in 1956 from an Anglo-Egyptian condominium. One month after South Sudan became the 193rd — and newest member of the UN — Hardeep Singh Puri, the then India’s Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, became President of the UN Security Council and helped stabilise conditions in the new-born country. Two months prior to the new state’s UN admission, Puri visited Khartoum and Juba, the latter now South Sudan’s capital, along with all the 14 other Security Council members and helped pave the way for a peaceful transition. When violence continued and the possibility loomed that South Sudan’s independence may be derailed, Puri advised patience at a council briefing in 2011: ‘A number of pending problems between the North and the South Sudan have long and complicated historical backgrounds. Their resolution requires patience and an approach that takes into consideration long-term interests of all the peoples inhabiting the region. Any attempt to put artificial deadlines and preconceived ideas will not be helpful to enhance mutual trust between the parties, nor for the long-term resolution of the pending issues.’ His advice was heeded by the council.

India was among the first countries to recognise the new African nation. The then Vice-President, Hamid Ansari, flew to Juba for its independence day celebrations. Those days, Indian diplomats in Juba were much in demand by the international community: the MEA had the foresight as early as 2007 to deduce the inevitability of South Sudan’s secession and quietly opened a consulate in Juba. Less than a year after independence, this post was upgraded to an embassy. Culturally, the Sudanese people — both northerners and southerners — are not ones to forget their old debts to friends. It did not come as a surprise, therefore, that during a recent visit to New Delhi, the senior-most South Sudanese functionary in their Ministry of Trade called on Puri, though Mou Athian Kuol’s visit for an EXIM Bank Conclave had nothing to do with the ministries under Puri’s charge.

Former Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah’s diplomatically unschooled Twitter war with Jaishankar, pushing for the rescue from the war zone of the state’s 31 Hakki Pikki (bird-catcher) tribe members, ill-serves the MEA’s efforts in Sudan. In a recent exercise unrelated to the latest conflict, the MEA announced that there are 1,600 ethnic Indians in Sudan. According to the Indian embassy in Khartoum, 1,200 of these are well-settled there: most of these are descendants of Indians who arrived in Sudan 150 years ago. Additionally, 2,400 Indians are distributed among UN staff, members of international organisations, professionals in IT and other service sectors. Indian presence is also scattered in pharmaceutical, sugar, steel and ceramic industries, where corporate India invested when peace and stability were on the horizon about two decades ago.

With the Indian community’s long, stable presence in Sudan, Siddaramaiah is politicising the case of Hakki Pikkis during Karnataka’s election campaign; this points to the need for a code of conduct among politicians in dealing with sensitive issues such as the safety of overseas Indians.

The first Indian to reach Sudan in 1856 with the aim of setting up a business was a Gujarati, Luvchand Amarchand Shah. He wound up his flourishing business in Aden because he foresaw the coming tragedy of Yemen. Shah was so excited by the fertile, prosperous potential of Sudan that he persuaded friends and relatives from Saurashtra to emigrate to Khartoum.

Today, Gujarati merchants are all over Sudan. Mahatma Gandhi was so impressed by the entrepreneurial spirit of these Gujaratis that he visited Port Sudan in 1935. Political expediency will prompt the MEA to help Indian Sudanese without any prodding. Because these Indians — especially the Gujarati merchants — are prosperous by Sudanese standards, Jaishankar has been stressing the need to keep their identities and their locations secret. Looting and dacoity are the norm in war zones. Siddaramaiah is exposing Indians in Sudan to danger by demanding transparency in getting them relief or in arranging their evacuation. India’s diplomatic efforts are also aimed at preventing Sudan’s neighbourhood from being drawn into the conflict. Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, South Sudan, even Egypt, could get drawn into the powder keg in Sudan. Indians have interests in these countries and the Modi government must keep all options open.